He grabbed her, forced her to the floor and raped his victim before beating her unconscious and leaving her for dead.

In December last year, he was jailed for life and was told he would have to serve a minimum of 13 and a half years.

Now, Detective Superintendent Gareth Meadows has spoken of his pride in the policing team which caught Dealey as they were commended for their work at Derbyshire police's Celebrating Achievement Awards night.

He thanked the public of Ilkeston for its help catching the criminal and revealed that, at one point, officers had a list of hundreds of people who could have done it.

Mr Meadows, who was Detective Chief Inspector at the time of the incident, said: “It was a classic ‘whodunit’, and we were worried that he might strike again.

“With most crimes there is an identifiable suspect through fingerprints or maybe CCTV.

Anthony Dealey (Image: Derby Telegraph)

“But this was different – no one saw it happen, there was no CCTV footage and the forensics evidence was very small.”

Mr Meadows said that, although a lot of work was done behind the scenes by forensics scientists, what helped was the people of Ilkeston banding together.

He said: “We distributed around 40,000 leaflets to the public asking for their help and it did work.

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“Finally I want to recognise the brilliant work of the people of Derbyshire Constabulary. There were lots of officers who really wanted to work on the case but couldn’t because they needed to do a normal shift.

“I’m very proud of my team. In all my 25 years of policing it was a privilege to work on the inquiry.”

The Celebrating Achievement Awards were held in in Chesterfield’s Proact Stadium on Tuesday, February 12.